Featured on The Book Show on Sky Arts at the Hay Festival on 31 May 2011.
Shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2011. Packed full of suspense, this is a tingling and chilling Gothic thriller in which nothing can quite be taken for granted. Rebecca is forced to abandon her bustling life in London for the unfamiliar village of Winterfold. So different from home, she finds it lonely and claustrophobic. When she meets Ferelith things begin to change and Rebecca soon finds herself caught up in a terrifying mystery from which there seems to be no escape. Marcus Sedgwick weaves several story strands together in this macabre tale.
It's summer. Rebecca is an unwilling visitor to Winterfold - taken from the buzz of London and her friends and what she thinks is the start of a promising romance. Ferelith already lives in Winterfold - it's a place that doesn't like to let you go, and she knows it inside out - the beach, the crumbling cliff paths, the village streets, the woods, the deserted churches and ruined graveyards, year by year being swallowed by the sea. Against her better judgement, Rebecca and Ferelith become friends, and during that long, hot, claustrophobic summer they discover more about each other and about Winterfold than either of them really want to, uncovering frightening secrets that would be best left long forgotten. Interwoven with Rebecca and Ferelith's stories is that of the seventeenth century Rector and Dr Barrieux, master of Winterfold Hall, whose bizarre and bloody experiments into the after-life might make angels weep, and the devil crow.
There are still gothic elements to White Crow, but this feels like something of a new direction for Sedgwick. This is essentially a contemporary tale of two girls friendship in a long, hot, tense summer, but it is interwoven with a 17th century tale of bizarre experiments into the afterlife. It is an original and exceptional novel of tragedy, angels, devils and friendship. -- Fiona Noble THE BOOKSELLER
Rebecca Case’s father is an unhappy soul. His wife has died,
though initially the reader doesn’t know how. He has a fractious
relationship with his 16-year-old daughter. He is a former policeman
who was falsely accused of murdering a girl. He doesn’t know whether
his daughter believes in his innocence.
He decides that he and Rebecca should leave London, fraught with
memories, and set up home in a sleepy seaside town called Winterfold.
Rebecca has left behind everything, including her boyfriend, and feels
lonely in the country. She meets a girl named Ferelith who lives with a
misfit band of lodgers in an ancient rectory and who is so academically
gifted that she left school two years earlier, having taken A levels at
the age of 14!
Rebecca and Ferelith strike up a passionate yet uneasy friendship.
Ferelith takes Rebecca to inspect Winterfold Hall, an ancient derelict
mansion. Coastal erosion means that many of the Winterfold buildings
are at risk of being swallowed by the sea. It seems that a doctor
conducted spiritualist experiments at the hall, trying to prove that
there is life after death. Interspersed in the contemporary narrative
are diary entries made by a priest in the late eighteenth century. For
some bizarre reason, belief in the afterlife is linked with belief in
the existence of white crows.
This book is a fairly daring mixture of gothic horror and
existential speculation. Does God exist? If so, what are the
consequences? If not, what then? As is typical of Sedgwick’s work, what
might have been a simple tale of friendship between two girls turns out
to draw the reader into more profound reflections about the nature of
human life and death. The act of suicide casts a shadow over the book.
The narrative is fast paced and dark. The characterization of the two
protagonists is powerful with one slight reservation. Ferelith could be
seen as a prototypical visionary figure. This is a book whose serious
subject matter suggests that it be read more than once.
Author
About Marcus Sedgwick
Marcus Sedgwick began to write seriously in 1994, and his first book, Floodland, was published by Orion in 2000, and won the Branford-Boase award for best debut children's novel. Witch Hill followed in 2001, and was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award.
The Kiss of Death is published in paperback in April 2009, and picks up a thread from his highly acclaimed My Swordhand is Singing (winner of the 2007 Booktrust Teenage Book Award). In between came what Marcus calls “my big one - a project I've been working on for so long my head hurts.” – Blood Red Snow White, which was first published to considerable acclaim in 2007.
2009 saw Marcus turn his attention to books for younger readers with the launch of a humorous new series: The Raven Mysteries, narrated by a grumpy raven, Edgar. Titles are Flood and Fang, Ghosts and Gadgets and Lunatics and Luck.
In his spare time, he is also a stone carver and wood engraver and illustrates all his novels! Marcus lives in Sussex with his wife and his daughter, Alice. Finally Marcus is also a drummer, and at the moment he plays in two bands: visit www.garrett-music.tv, and www.internationalbandofmystery.com to find out more.
Q&A with Marcus Sedgwick
Many of your novels are inspired by history and by myth and legend - have these areas always been a fascination of yours since childhood and if so how did this passion come about? Yes, I always loved myths and legends - I used to read and re-read two books from the library - one a big illustrated edition of Greek Myths and the other Old Peter's Russian Tales. I don't know why I was fascinated by these stories, but maybe simply because I find them to be more glamorous than contemporary stories...
Apart from writing what are your passions? I love music, both listening to it and playing it (I'm a drummer). A day without music is not a proper day... I also love travel and try to travel as much as I can manage.
Where did the idea come from for The Raven Mysteries? It was a single line, the first line in the book in fact. I'd had it for ages but didn't know where I was going to use it until the character of Edgar came along: "I suspect I may have fleas again".
The Raven Mysteries are full of humour and mad-cap action, which is quite different from your novels for older readers. Was this a conscious decision of yours when setting out to write this series? Absolutely, and it was great fun. After writing a few hardcore goth books, it was great to let my hair down with these stories. And it gave me fresh impetus to go back to the next YA novel, Revolver, with renewed determination to be gloomy!
Where and when do you write? I write at the weekends, and mostly in the study in my loft, but also sometimes I travel to write - eg much of Revolver was written on trips to Sweden.
What age did you first start writing and when did you think that one day you'd write a novel that would actually be published? I started to write as a teenager a bit, but properly when I was in my mid-twenties. It took a few years to think it might actually happen!
With both your publisher and author hat on, what advice can you give would-be children's authors in getting published? The most important thing is to know your market! Who do you think your book is going to be read by? What else is out there that's like it? Are you writing something that will sell?
The historical context of most of your novels must mean a huge amount of research prior to writing each book. What does this involve and how long does it take? It varies from book to book but it's not a chore as I love to do research. It's easier than actually writing the things! For Revolver, the research spanned about 16 months, of little trips here and there and lots and lots of reading!
What was your inspiration for Revolver ? Finding an empty shell casing on the pavement in St Petersburg. It was a long way from there to the finished book but that was the start of it.
What was your favourite book as a teenager? Without question, the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake.
If you got into Doctor Who’s tardis, where (or when) would you go? Great question, impossible to answer. So many amazing things to go and see – the building of the pyramids, a Viking boat putting out to sea, Man Utd winning the European Championship in 1968…
Who would you choose to be if you could be a celebrity for the day? Matt Bellamy on any day with a gig.
If you were invisible for a day what would you do? I’m invisible most days, so nothing much would change.
10 things you didn't know about Marcus Sedgwick
1 - I have an embarrassing middle name, but I'm not going to tell you what it is 2 - I am learning Swedish 3 - As well as playing the drums, I play bass guitar 4 - My grandfather invented the hydraulic tipper truck 5 - I have a pet raven called Edgar, though he doesn’t say much, eat much, or indeed, move much. There’s a possibility that he’s stuffed, I guess. 6 - I’m extraordinarily sleepy right now. 7 - I represented England (Juniors) at Fencing. 8 - I totally love football. 9 - I'm allergic to red peppers 10 - I believe there is only one radio or TV station worth listening to: Radio 3.
